Hey Devs take a walk in ATL Luna ...

Stratics Veteran

You missed alot of dupers and the items they created with the duped Val Hammers. Anyone with some spare time walk thru Atlantic Luna City the Armor and weapons created by the last dupe are so fantastic they will easily make anything else around seem pitiful. It a shame ea/mythic waited so long to fix the problem. Its obvious where the vendors are filled with items created from duped val hammers.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Jeeez!
They didn´t ban the dupers, but only the owners of duped items, wich might be ok if it comes to a lot of duped rares (it´s more easy to know if that rare is a dupe), but is totally crapolla if it´s because duped checks... (how in hell should I tell the origin of checks?!?).
Sadly EA pulled the wrong end of the rope...

Stratics Veteran

If devs are serious about stopping duping they should red flag events such as Valorite runics and BRKs bought off a vendor, or traded in a trade window, or Xsharded, or dropped/picked up.

Things to store would be account ids, IP addresses, house account id, item id and price. Then if there are ridiculous numbers being xsharded, or sold by an account id, or from a particular house, then those accounts should be banned.

Stratics Veteran

The equipement created by the valorite hammers is just incredible I can't imagine how many hammers were burned just make the mage platemail it truly could ruin pvp and become the have and the have nots.

Stratics Veteran

The equipement created by the valorite hammers is just incredible I can't imagine how many hammers were burned just make the mage platemail it truly could ruin pvp and become the have and the have nots.

the trouble is that the dupe items have the same "id number" we will call it. Where the armor that was created probably as genuine as it is, gets a new number created on every piece. Thats probably why they cant just go in and ban them outright without some kind of extra work on the devs part in trying to get these cheaters banned.

I am just suprised that there has not been a patch or update in 2 weeks to the game to say "we fixxed some exploits".... yeah.. right I know.. what was I thinking?? it will be in the next patch. HAHAHAHAHA

This was already stated before they even did the banning. The part about the armors they had created. Most of the exploit pvp reds that hunt fel & T2A Champ invades have the best suits on the shard. The suits are untouchable and with a little group skill, hard to deal with at times.The prices they are charging for these items are now making them rich if you can afford to buy them. One, makes a regular honest crafter cry. Two, makes a regular champ hunter kinda upset. Yes, they know that one big house you speak of. It got flamestrike warnings in advance for everyone to pull their obvious duped stuff off. Wanna make a statement? Burn that street corner down where all the illegals know they have free rane as usuall. That would be a statement! Unless, someone knows someone and is keeping it up because of a so called friendship/favoratism. Kinda obvious if you ask me. But, alas, everyone has a right to their own thoughts why the most infamous drug house on the corner is overlooked by the long arm of the law. I give up on trying to guess why at this point.

This was already stated before they even did the banning. The part about the armors they had created. Most of the exploit pvp reds that hunt fel & T2A Champ invades have the best suits on the shard. The suits are untouchable and with a little group skill, hard to deal with at times.The prices they are charging for these items are now making them rich if you can afford to buy them. One, makes a regular honest crafter cry. Two, makes a regular champ hunter kinda upset. Yes, they know that one big house you speak of. It got flamestrike warnings in advance for everyone to pull their obvious duped stuff off. Wanna make a statement? Burn that street corner down where all the illegals know they have free rane as usuall. That would be a statement! Unless, someone knows someone and is keeping it up because of a so called friendship/favoratism. Kinda obvious if you ask me. But, alas, everyone has a right to their own thoughts why the most infamous drug house on the corner is overlooked by the long arm of the law. I give up on trying to guess why at this point.

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Its so obvious the corner there on atlantic is going to be made into 1 big house and sold.

There were 4 plots. But when the warning came.... the guy bag his stuff on the two small plots in the back and merged it into 1 house. Now the the front 2 are down. Wanna bet they will be merged?

Seriously. If everyone knows it, has known it and thinks they have a mole inside that gives them the heads up when things are gonna come down the pipeline, they aren't gonna do squat to the main offenders now two main areas. We are and have been discussing it here in the open and nothing! Duperville Villas are still there and if they were gonna actually be smart and do anything covert, they would have. Ain't gonna happen. Remember that when the FOF comes out making a big statement of what they think they did but not the main offenders hideouts they left behind. I'm thinking about it every time one of my automatic monthly payments goes through for one of my accounts.

Lets be clear though - my picture post was items I created on test center using a Val hammer as an example of the type of armor that can be crafted with just a few swings.

It is NOT production shard armor with hammers. I have not held a Val Hammer on a prod shard in my 6 years of playing.

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Understood, the trouble is that these items are in the game, on production shards, we certainly see them. My thanks stem from a posting dummy who has a tough time with screenshots, what you guys do via your efforts is visually demonstrate what can/ is happening. Again, thanks!

the trouble is that the dupe items have the same "id number" we will call it. Where the armor that was created probably as genuine as it is, gets a new number created on every piece. Thats probably why they cant just go in and ban them outright without some kind of extra work on the devs part in trying to get these cheaters banned.

I am just suprised that there has not been a patch or update in 2 weeks to the game to say "we fixxed some exploits".... yeah.. right I know.. what was I thinking?? it will be in the next patch. HAHAHAHAHA

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I suspect the fixes for things like dupes are server-side fixes. No client patch is necessary. Also, the server side fixes could add logging to catch ppl that were using the exploit too.

I got an account banned for owning some hammers , but I still see what must be duped hammers val and verite for sale an mass in ATL , why the hell aint they being removed , other peopel risk getting banned because of buying them , to late for me but what the hell is going on , when some one unsuspectingly buying the hammers gets banned , but the peopel selling them can keep doing so...... EA U SUCK !!!!!!!!

Stratics Veteran

Colter, that guy started with 1 barbed armor vendor months ago. He's continued to sell high end armor for prices that are often much higher than the cost of a kit. I can tell you he honestly built up that enterprise in luna by just buying kits and selling armor until hes gotten to the point of just buying every kit and hammer he can find. he's also very friendly and willing to help folks out on deals and is a part of WRR, a group that would never tolerate cheating.

So you've been to his house, checked out his computers to see what he is running right?

I don't know what your relationship to this clown is, but don't bother trying to defend this cheater. He is obviously a scripter/duper who was trying to sell his ill gotten fortune on the trade forums for RL cash before they were removed.

Colter, that guy started with 1 barbed armor vendor months ago. He's continued to sell high end armor for prices that are often much higher than the cost of a kit. I can tell you he honestly built up that enterprise in luna by just buying kits and selling armor until hes gotten to the point of just buying every kit and hammer he can find. he's also very friendly and willing to help folks out on deals and is a part of WRR, a group that would never tolerate cheating.

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Ah being friendly and working hard and nice isnt the issue. I bet he is. And I bet, he's thinking "dang valorites are cheap. I made money off barbs. Let me buy the hammers."

I dont think there is anything wrong with that. What I think is EA screwed up the handling of the dupe and products from the dupe that is the hammers and created armour.

This guy might be a great guy. But he was buying hammers when others were buying hammers and didnt get pinched. Is that bad... I dont care.

He is not the issue. That is how we get distracted. We dive into personality attacks and such. I assume hes great and legit.

Did he buy cheap runics? Ofcourse he did.

BUT THE PROBLEM IS EA could have done this.

Citizens of UO a dupe has caused massive amounts of verite and valorite hammers. Purchasing them may lead to banning.

Then after they fix the dupe or while they fix the dupe. DELETE all hammers at server up.

OR

Anytime one pops up on a vendor, freeze the vendor. Things that dont get the player banned but prevents the sale.

Any vendor selling the items take everything including the gold.
Teach them a lesson.

Once you see what guy is duping or restocking. Spy on him. Learn about his contacts. etc.

I saw a verite for 12.5 million yesterday. Would I be banned if I bought it and banged out some sweet armour.

THATS THE PROBLEM I dont know.

What do I have to do open a 15 day account.
Drop a box of checks in the woods.
Buy the hammer with the 15 day account.
Drop the hammer in the woods.
Craft the armour with my smith.
Drop the armour n the woods.
Get my vendor player and stock.

Oh wait maybe thats what the dupers do. Now I have to be dupish to by a runic hammer or a barbed kit?

Obviously Im just leaving them alone and selling other stuff. But if I didnt come here and read and learn. That verite for 12.5 looks might nice.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

you cant ban people from games with an IP adress, but i definatly agree that creditcards should be non reuseable. i bet that would help a bit more. actually, you could use an IP for a little bit to find all the accounts to ban. that would help if they were on dif cards.

So you've been to his house, checked out his computers to see what he is running right?

I don't know what your relationship to this clown is, but don't bother trying to defend this cheater. He is obviously a scripter/duper who was trying to sell his ill gotten fortune on the trade forums for RL cash before they were removed.

I'd bet money this guy is script mining and BoD collecting.

So you're admitting he bought a ton of duped hammers.....then he should have been banned.

This guy should not only have all his accounts banned, but his IP and CC#'s blocked.

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Wait bod collecting is not bad. And he could be purchasing from the miner guilds or he could be doing what you said who knows. I just dont like to assume things on anybody.

Stratics Veteran

Colter, that guy started with 1 barbed armor vendor months ago. He's continued to sell high end armor for prices that are often much higher than the cost of a kit. I can tell you he honestly built up that enterprise in luna by just buying kits and selling armor until hes gotten to the point of just buying every kit and hammer he can find. he's also very friendly and willing to help folks out on deals and is a part of WRR, a group that would never tolerate cheating.

You missed alot of dupers and the items they created with the duped Val Hammers. Anyone with some spare time walk thru Atlantic Luna City the Armor and weapons created by the last dupe are so fantastic they will easily make anything else around seem pitiful. It a shame ea/mythic waited so long to fix the problem. Its obvious where the vendors are filled with items created from duped val hammers.

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Indeed they missed a lot of them. (*cough*staypuff*cough*).
He keeps UO well STOCK at his .COM!!

Of course WRR would never tolerate dupers....except maybe that one vendor at the WRR auction house on PAC that had multiple valorite and barbed runics for sale at the time of the ban. He pulled em mighty quick when the hammer started falling. Thie certain upstanding fellow you speak of has also flooded the market with enough uber armor to equip a legion of warriors. Every vendor house in sight has at least one or two vendors calling out his name.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Of course WRR would never tolerate dupers....except maybe that one vendor at the WRR auction house on PAC that had multiple valorite and barbed runics for sale at the time of the ban. He pulled em mighty quick when the hammer started falling. Thie certain upstanding fellow you speak of has also flooded the market with enough uber armor to equip a legion of warriors. Every vendor house in sight has at least one or two vendors calling out his name.

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Yeah, they seem to do a better job of hiding them. Probably storing in the hold of boats that are hard to track ownership. You don't need to place the boat - just need to have access to a key. When the banning ends, start parading them out of your boat again.

I don't think UO's items actually have unique ID numbers.
Reason 1: why have an ID number? To what purpose? How is it used?
Reason 2: the ID number would be so huge because of the billions/trillions/gazillions(?) of items in game. This would stress server storage and backup especially if there's no reason for a unique ID number.
Reason 3: if there were unique ID numbers it would be very, very simple to sort the Item ID field in the database and then locate the duplicates (I program databases in RL), very, very easy. But Instead EA is laboriously physically searching for large quantities of items that can't occur in large quantities. (Another very easy solution would be to make the Item ID field exclusive, don't allow the creation of a duplicate ID. Your client would crash when duping.) I think EA would choose the easier approach if it were an option. There's no unique ID.

EA should be able to create a bot that runs through accounts and using a list of rare items, counts the number of rare items on each account. If the count exceeds the norm, flag for further "attention".

Stratics VeteranIt's My Birthday

Yeah, they seem to do a better job of hiding them. Probably storing in the hold of boats that are hard to track ownership. You don't need to place the boat - just need to have access to a key. When the banning ends, start parading them out of your boat again.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

somehow the dev team bans people that are doing dupes secretly but not by obvious people who have vendors stocked with dupes, seriously, please dev team i hope you read this thread, just DELETE any vendor with a val hammer on it and ban the owner not just a regular ban, IP ban him from uo so they can't log into uo with that computer again... because lets face it, everyone who plays uo has like a .000000000001% chance of legitimately getting a val hammer through bods, i've played uo for 8 years and got 1 val hammer ever on my own and that was because i got the L bod and 4 smalls from an idoc, any vendor that you see stocked with true rares/event items should be deleted and the owners account should be ip banned as well, this must be done !

I don't think UO's items actually have unique ID numbers.
Reason 1: why have an ID number? To what purpose? How is it used?
Reason 2: the ID number would be so huge because of the billions/trillions/gazillions(?) of items in game. This would stress server storage and backup especially if there's no reason for a unique ID number.
Reason 3: if there were unique ID numbers it would be very, very simple to sort the Item ID field in the database and then locate the duplicates (I program databases in RL), very, very easy. But Instead EA is laboriously physically searching for large quantities of items that can't occur in large quantities. (Another very easy solution would be to make the Item ID field exclusive, don't allow the creation of a duplicate ID. Your client would crash when duping.) I think EA would choose the easier approach if it were an option. There's no unique ID.

EA should be able to create a bot that runs through accounts and using a list of rare items, counts the number of rare items on each account. If the count exceeds the norm, flag for further "attention".

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I kinda disagree, if you try and plant a seed in a container it tells you the exact seed # already planted. Im sure this was unintended but the evidance shows they have a specific number for that seed. try it when the planted container is locked down and try planting a second seed in it.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

I don't think UO's items actually have unique ID numbers.
Reason 1: why have an ID number? To what purpose? How is it used?
Reason 2: the ID number would be so huge because of the billions/trillions/gazillions(?) of items in game. This would stress server storage and backup especially if there's no reason for a unique ID number.
Reason 3: if there were unique ID numbers it would be very, very simple to sort the Item ID field in the database and then locate the duplicates (I program databases in RL), very, very easy. But Instead EA is laboriously physically searching for large quantities of items that can't occur in large quantities. (Another very easy solution would be to make the Item ID field exclusive, don't allow the creation of a duplicate ID. Your client would crash when duping.) I think EA would choose the easier approach if it were an option. There's no unique ID.

EA should be able to create a bot that runs through accounts and using a list of rare items, counts the number of rare items on each account. If the count exceeds the norm, flag for further "attention".

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The reason I believe they have unique id's is because the devs SAID they implemented it a few years ago to curb the duping problems.

However, think about this : You dupe a bod for a val hammer, then turn the bod in. The hammer that is created is created WITHOUT duping so they cannot be tracked.

That is the whole problem here and why EA is simply banning people with alot of suspected items. They have no idea who duped them - they just are trying to take them out of the world.

Problem is, they only seem to be getting the people who bought them to resell. The dupers are better at 'hiding' them and thus are getting away with it and are still selling them.

Plus all the folks who bought and used them now have armor pieces that are completely untraceable.

... I'm just confused as to why you missed basically the worst offenders. I hope there's more to come...

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So, why give any cheaters a heads-up to move their cheats when we could just do as has already been asked of us and pass it along to the Dev Team? Contacting them is not too hard. Here I make it even easier. Goto: uo.com bug reports

I spend years of time trying to get a val hammer and best i get is a gold and look at that. Boy have i wasted my time in this game. Yet the madness continues and so will my HONESTLY DESERVED VAL HAMMER. Or ill just close my accounts like many others allowing the cheaters to win! Ea really needs to wake up and smell the coffee! Well we lose x amount of players that dont want to play a game where cheaters rule. Or get rid of the cheaters and continue making much more money on the game! And the developers shpuld ask themselfs which road will look best on their resume!

Stratics Veteran

So, why give any cheaters a heads-up to move their cheats when we could just do as has already been asked of us and pass it along to the Dev Team? Contacting them is not too hard. Here I make it even easier. Goto: uo.com bug reports

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I emailed jdalberg at ea dot com on August 4 (as she requested if we knew something, in my case I know what he told me paid for val runics before the dupe scandal).

Pacific armor seller extraordinaire/small time gold seller who has been in possession of at least 40 val runics since the dupe bannings was number one top of my list of 5 players that need investigating/watching.

That was BEFORE he even had all 564 pieces of val runic crafted armor stocked on his vendors.

That was 10 days ago.

Why is he still in UO making irl big bucks (he sells UO gold for cash) selling dupe made armor and duped val runics?

- I dunno.
Maybe they are just gathering up more bad eggs before making another nasty omelette (~ breaking the rotten eggs and burninating them with fire)?
There could be many, many reasons why action has not been taken just yet (and some of them could benefit the honest playerbase too).

But, I am happy to hear you reported it via official channels rather than give free public advertisement to all of it. I bet some of them are laughing themselves silly at the extra gold they will make due to the frustrations of legitimate players advertising their wares for them.
Thanks

(Sidebar: I have zero issues selling legitimate UO stuff for cash. I hate cheating of any kind, especially in game environments. In fact, if it wasn't for cheating and the actions taken early this August, I would be in that exact business and concentrating on trying to make it more legitimate & available for all, at every chance I could find. I had just been awaiting UO's next movement against this issue before I went public & unfortunately it did not bode well for my plans (although I am happy they took some action against the cheating activities). So... I have put all of that on the backburner & most-likely forever.
Yeah, I know several may not like hearing that & I usually try not to bring too much personal into my AesSedai persona; but that is some more truth for ya'll, as I've been bound by the Oath Rod.)

Stratics Veteran

Pacific armor seller extraordinaire/small time gold seller who has been in possession of at least 40 val runics since the dupe bannings was number one top of my list of 5 players that need investigating/watching.

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I reported a player who advertises multiple packages of 100 valorite runic hammers on their webpage who is currently selling on Atlantic. Between the major dupers/fences and some numbers I've fished up by querying them on their stock and pretending to be interested in large purchases, I'd estimate there are still at least 5,000 valorite runic hammers in circulation, and billions in duped rares.

Stratics VeteranIt's My Birthday

Me be thinkin' the bestest way fer the game companies ta hurt the farmers/scripters be ta make it simple and legal fer everyone ta sell their pieces o' eight! 'Twould keep prices down and make it less profitable fer the profiteers; if transactions be tied ta yer account, then ya lose yer account too if ye be scammin'!

- I know we're straying off topic... but I agree SSeadog.
The thing is, for the game companies interested in cashing-in on it, & providing another option for their playerbase, it would require them to venture into an area they are unfamiliar with and it could potentially put them in some touchy legal situations too, by my reckoning.
Tying transactions directly to accounts would be best, yes!
But these game companies are huge and they might offend a goodly portion of their playerbase by offering such trading options. Btw, I believe Sony retired their experiment with supporting sales on certain EQ servers. Thus I felt the best option would be to provide a 3rd party that only dealt with games that accepted these activities as per their rules. I certainly intended to provide the gaming companies with info. on people my company had found to be fraudulent/illegitimate, as a way to strengthen bonds and try to help remove as many cheaters as swiftly as possible. Granted, many would still seep through that sieve and survive, but it would be another 'bite out of crime'. As well, I was determined to provide a place where buyers and sellers did not have to concern themselves so much with people selling something other than what was advertised and/or the devious methods that people have often used to obtain things of value and then simply turn around and take their money back. Due to the nature of the recent bannings (I did not lose any accounts), I just cannot see proceeding with my plans to be of any benefit other than a loss of income.. If I had much more money than I do, then I could see a light at the end of the tunnel; but alas matey, I am not a big operation that thrives on cashing-in on game cheaters, nor did I ever aspire to be (heck, I have not even been an active operation) - like most of the big names out there seem to be...

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